Rudy Giuliani on Free Trade

Former Mayor of New York City; Republican Candidate for 2000 Senate (NY)

China is a great opportunity and a great caution for the US

The reality is that China is a great opportunity for the US and a great caution for the US. It’s a great opportunity for us to engage in trade, and the more America engages in trade, the more we get to know a country, the less likely we are to have
military hostilities. We should be working with China to try to push down some of these barriers; protection for intellectual property; rule of law; an ability to sue in China, so you can be protected if you’re doing business there. We’ve got to be very
careful about what we import from China, from the point of view of safety and security, not as much from the point of view of our economy. We have to look at the rise of China as a wonderful opportunity. I see 20 or 30 million people coming out of povert
in China every year. That’s 20 or 30 million more customers for the US. That’s 20 or 30 million more people we can be selling things to. What can we sell to China? We can sell them energy independence, health processes, and information processes.

NAFTA has been a good thing and should be enforced

NAFTA should be enforced. NAFTA has been a good thing. I was concerned about NAFTA and I became convince, watching it, that it’s actually helped us. Our percentage of exports, percentage of our GDP, has gone up dramatically from something like 9% to 11%.
It’s brought more jobs to the US. The US should think about free trade, global economy, as something we want to embrace. This is what we’ve always wanted. The US is a country of entrepreneurs & dreamers
& creators, and what we should be thinking about is, how much can we sell to these people? As they’re coming out of poverty--20 million, 30 million people in India, China--these are new customers for the US. Then we have to make sure that we
have a level playing field. That’s very important. But we shouldn’t lose the goal of free trade. We’re big dreamers here in this country. We’ve got plenty we can sell all over the world that will make up for what we’re buying.

More trade with Qatar & emirates is good against terrorism

Q: Your consulting business has been involved with the country of Qatar.

A: The reality is that we need to develop friends in the Middle East. We need to develop friendships with the Emirates, with Qatar, with Kuwait. These are countries that we have t
get closer to. We should trade more with them, we should be involved more with them as we stand up to Islamic terrorism. If they’re asking an American company to help them deal with the Islamic terrorist threat in a more secure way, the people involved
in this are people that are some of the biggest experts on Islamic terrorism who had been with the FBI. This is a good thing to do. This is a thing that helps us kind of work on the other side of how do you remain on offense against Islamic terrorists?

A: That’s just totally wrong. The relationship is not with any of those people.

Good deals pending with Peru, Colombia, Panama, South Korea

Q: Has this country become protectionist, or are there serious, real national security concerns?

A: I think we’re on a verge of going in one direction or another. I mean, for example, if you want to get specific, the four trade deals with Peru,
Colombia, Panama, South Korea that are in front of Congress right now, which the Democrats are trying to block, would be good deals for the US. In 3 of the 4 of them, we would actually get to export more than we’re importing. Why they would want to
block this I can’t understand. We’re already importing about 98% from those countries. [Regarding protectionism], I think you got to almost separate them into two different categories. There’s economic protection, and then there’s protection for safety,
security and legal rights. And I don’t think we’ve done a particularly good job on the second. We can’t say because these agreements weren’t perfect, because they have problems, because they have issues, we’re going to turn our back on free trade.

Balance foreign debt by selling more things overseas

Q: Hillary Clinton says that one of our biggest economic threats right now is how much of our federal debt is owned overseas by foreigners. Do you agree?

A: Actually, the way to balance that is to sell more things overseas.
That’s the usual Democratic pessimistic approach. How about we try an optimistic approach? The way to balance the books is sell more overseas. Sell energy independence. Sell health care. Let’s do it in a positive way.

Source: 2007 Republican debate in Dearborn, Michigan
, Oct 9, 2007

Take advantage of globalization--market US healthcare abroad

Q: What about taking some action to limit the US trade deficit--is that protectionist?

A: Generally a bad idea and generally self-defeating. And certainly not an agenda for the future, kind of an agenda for the past. The best way to deal with the
global economy is to take advantage of it in an aggressive way, in an optimistic way. Let’s build industries that we can sell in this new part of the world where we have a growing number of consumers.

Let’s think of the strength of
American health care rather than just the weaknesses of it. We’re still the place where more people want to come to get medical treatment. People aren’t flooding hospitals in Europe and Asia to get brain surgery and cancer treatment, they’re coming to
America. We’re perilously close to pushing them in the other direction of socialized medicine, but we still have the best health care system in the world. Let’s market that. That’s a product we can sell. We’re ahead of everybody else on that.